Art & Alchemy
In the kitchen of Alicia Hauff’s home, it’s not uncommon to find a pot of flower petals simmering on the stove or tree bark steeping for days. After sustainably foraging for native plants in her neighborhood, local parks, farms, and lakes country, Alicia pursues her passion for art and alchemy, crafting wild ink that she creates within her South Fargo studio. A former nurse practitioner and lifelong artist, Alicia took a leap, stepped outside, and followed the calling that had always beckoned her, allowing nature to heal her soul and inspire her latest works. The outdoors is her ultimate destination, a breeding ground for essential native species, our ancestral roots, and crucial medicinal properties that are awaiting their day in the sun. In life and art, Alicia is cultivating a deeper connection with the earth, unafraid to get her hands dirty and share the value of growing our relationship as caregivers to non-human kin.
By Tracy Nicholson
Photography by Morgan Allora, Studio Freshly, Britta the Photographer & Alicia Hauff
Nature & Nurture
Originally from Minot, ND, Alicia and her husband, Matthew, live in Fargo, where they work and raise their three young boys. Matthew, a residential and commercial builder/contractor, has been an unwavering support in her transition from nurse practitioner to a full-time artist, understanding Alicia’s need for a release and return to her roots of artistry. In fact, he outfitted a room in his office building for her to lease as studio space. Some of his spare time is spent building Alicia’s canvases from scrap wood and frames from hardwood as part of the change. “He is helping me build some equity and grow my business. I don’t take it for granted for a second,” said Hauff.
For Alicia, deciding to leave healthcare after ten years was a difficult but undeniable choice. The Artist Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by author Julia Cameron, was one of the more influential books that struck a chord with her, describing what it feels like to be a blocked creative and the negative impact this state can have on one’s life. The book teaches techniques to gain self-confidence; helping creative beings harness their talents and skills.
Making the transition to a full-time artist, Alicia didn’t feel called to pursue a fine arts degree. She had already spent her life in a perpetual state of learning, taking countless art classes and practicing nearly every known media, from acrylic painting and watercolor to collage paper and her more recent abstract mixed media and wild ink.
Today, her multimedia work reflects a deep, thoughtful, and more personalized exploration of land and plants, influenced by the book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer. “She’s a professor of botany and indigenous herself. How she explores both Western scientific approaches and the need to bring back indigenous teachings and practices is masterful,” explained Hauff. “I pretty much cried through every chapter. It was heart-changing, something I credit for completely altering the trajectory of my creative work and flow. What really stood out for me was getting to know the local land and plants as community members. It has been proven that plants communicate with each other and indigenous people have worked with plants physically, spiritually, and energetically. I think it’s important to understand what that means, that we have to get back to that connection to save this planet.”
Make Ink
Another heart-changing influence in Alicia’s journey was Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking, authored by Jason Logan. Logan’s expertise in responsible foraging and eco-friendly ink-making kick-started Alicia’s own “kitchen lab,” where she cooks up an array of native, invasive, and seed-grown plants, including tree bark, rose petals, buckthorn berries, acorn cups, sumac, and wild grapes. Roughly half of her plants, like the Japanese Indigo, are grown from seed.
Alicia also forages for dark clusters of oak galls, which are the aftermath of the tree’s reaction to an egg-laying of a specific wasp. Alicia grinds up the hardened clusters and mixes them with ferrous sulfate to create a dark brown or black ink, the same ink once used to sign the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence.
Although she has 10 basic recipes from Logan, plants are highly unpredictable; changed by sun, soil conditions, and season. Testing heat, timing, and base additives like copper oxide or iron oxide are part of the chemistry experimentation, which can dramatically change the ink’s color intensity or create crystallization on canvas. While delicate flower petals may only need 30 minutes of cooking with heat, specific plants require base additives, and tree bark can take days of steeping.
This past summer, Alicia also mastered the art of transforming wild ink into a shelf-stable powder, which gives her the ability to make her own plant-based paint that’s archival and eco-friendly. Finally, bringing her passion full circle was an ecoprinting class at the Plains Art Museum, which introduced her to the relationship, community, and play of earthen materials transferred onto paper.
Now a dedicated artist, she’s excited to share her knowledge of ecoprinting, foraging, and ink-making within her studio’s workshops. “I finally feel like I’ve done this long enough to share and teach from my experience,” said Hauff. “I want to show people how to work with this bioregion of plants, and put the ethics of harvesting front and center.” She plans to launch two new workshops in 2024.
Radical Noticing
“In general, I think we’ve grown too comfortable and everything is too convenient,” said Hauff. “Maybe that’s what drives me to slower ways of working with materials – making my own paint, my own ink, and getting to know the land through the seasons, not just the summer. For me, it’s a lifelong journey, and there are different ways to interact with plants – that can mean drawing them, consuming them, growing them from seed, and nurturing them. I want people to take a walk and practice radical noticing – actually looking at things, but this time really seeing them.”
“Now, when I’m out foraging, I take a picture of a plant I don’t know, find out what it is, and even talk to it, considering plants and land as kin. I don’t think about what I can get from it, I now think about what it might need,” said Hauff. “For the last two years, I’ve also been practicing ancestral medicine and lineage healing. I understand that all of this work I’m doing needs to be rooted deeply in my own animist culture. I need to work authentically and consciously, in a way that doesn’t co-opt other cultural influences.”
She also completed a six-month course on Energetic Ecology, the practice of working with plants and land on a variety of planes. “For me, this is about understanding how the land was impacted by my ancestors; when they arrived here, and how they farmed the land for survival. I’m trying to heal those lineages, working with the land in a proper relationship,” said Hauff. “I don’t want people to elevate me, I want to elevate the land, the plants, and the people who have already been doing this. I’m just here to do the work and do my part.”
Spring & Summer Series
To deepen her connection with the terrain of land and heart, Alicia envisioned not just painting ‘en plein air,’ but truly developing a collection that would showcase the relationship of plants, birds, soils, and rocks. Her Spring and Summer on the Prairie Series were inspired by a desire to bring some realism back into her practice with drawing, and her springboard was surprisingly a North Dakota Game & Fish booklet. “This booklet detailed spring native wildflowers, then summer into fall native wildflowers. It was perfect, it was all laid out for me,” said Hauff. “I did 15 to 16 for each series this past year, and then pulled in all of the botanical information, and also what they were used for medicinally, historically, where they came from – weaving everything together.”
“I really like the juxtaposition of swaths of color with realistic graphic drawings.”
- ALICIA HAUFF
In her recent series, Alicia displays a preference for the softness of raw canvas, as opposed to the more typical starkness of primed white canvases. She has also moved away from heavier acrylic abstract works to more fluid acrylic media with hand-drawn botanicals, pencils, pastels, and a sprinkling of earth pigments.
“I was doing exclusively abstracts last year, but I missed drawing. I love that in this series, I pulled back some realism, but still kept the abstract color ways,” said Hauff. “I really like the juxtaposition of swaths of color with realistic graphic drawings.” Due to the fluidity of the paint, each layer must be painted and dried flat. When creating a new series, Alicia’s canvases are everywhere as she works entirely on flat surfaces like table tops and floors.
While she’s working on a painting series, she is weaving in her foraging, cooking, and creating with her wild ink. Her ink works are smaller in scale at this time, but she anticipates scaling these larger, incorporating her earth pigment paints. Her current wild ink sketches are a scientific color portrait, marking place, plant species, and time, ensuring its recipient knows the origin of the earthen gift they’ve been given.
Ethical Foraging
One of Alicia’s most common spots for foraging is her own South Fargo neighborhood, including her front porch serviceberry, backyard roses, and leftover beets from her kitchen, which produce a beautifully vibrant ink. Alicia also takes fall trips to her husband’s family farm in Galesburg, ND, for black walnut, and lakes country for sumac. Her wild grape and buckthorn berries are often found at places like Buffalo State Park and M.B. Johnson Park.
“When foraging at parks, it’s important to consider the species, if it’s invasive or how abundant it is,” said Hauff. “I refer to the honorable harvest principles from Braiding Sweetgrass – asking how much is present, who depends on that plant, and if it’s ready to be harvested. In this case, buckthorn and wild grapes are invasive and found in abundance, so I don’t feel too bad about taking three cups of wild grapes. It doesn’t always take that much though, sometimes I only have a cup-and-a-half of rose petals from my backyard and I can still get quite a bit of color from that.”
Attainable Art
Although Alicia has been an artist for most of her life, she still considers herself more of an emerging professional artist, pricing each piece by a square inch and multiplier method that takes the emotion out of it. Her wild ink and handmade paper collage pricing is modest and attainable, with smaller pieces starting at $42 and larger pieces starting at $128 – mainly quantifying her labor and overhead to generously share her talent and underlying message with folks from all walks of life. “The most important part for me is to be very transparent about the process, where everything is sourced, and how the inks are made.” Her paintings on canvas cost understandably more, reflecting the majority of her focus and time each year, and she loves to paint large pieces. During the last two months of the year, her focus is on creating a variety of smaller originals for holiday sales. Naturally, her practice will grow and evolve with time.
Creative Commissioning
Commissioned work is something Alicia has been doing organically for years at the request of friends and family. “I welcome commissions and the uniquely fun challenge they present,” said Hauff. “It’s about making that connection and gauging what would be meaningful to that person. I work to channel a mood, a palette, certain details, or a theme, then alchemize it into something new. I want the result to be enduring and take on a life of its own.”
“I don’t know why, but I’m surprised how much healthcare has prepared me to work as an artist with people – to have higher emotional intelligence and empathy, read body language, mirror people, and really see where they’re coming from,” said Hauff. “Deep listening was something that I did constantly in healthcare to diagnose and determine a plan – it’s the same process when working with my clients for commissioned pieces.” She also developed research, organizational, and planning skills during healthcare studies and practice that serve her well in her professional art practice.
Landing Soon: Birds on the Prairie
By early April, Alicia will launch her Spring Series inspired by songbirds, followed by a Summer Series that pays homage to upland game and waterfowl. To prepare, she will be researching and pulling in elements of their habitat, spending time outside birdwatching, and even catching some species with an AI-powered "Bird Buddy" feeder and camera system outside her home.
To stay informed of upcoming artist and series receptions, follow her on Instagram and go to her website to subscribe to monthly newsletters. Don't forget to check out Alicia's social pages and website for in-person workshop dates and upcoming on-demand classes, walking students through the process of ecoprinting, foraging, plant cooking/chemistry, and painting with wild ink.
Support Local Art
Find Alicia’s work on her website or make an appointment at her South Fargo studio to shop her latest collection. Her work can also be purchased in Fargo-Moorhead at Curated Home, Alina Collective, Dakota Fine Art Gallery, and The Rourke Art Museum & Gallery, with consignment pieces also displayed on the ninth floor of Jasper Hotel in downtown Fargo.
Contact the Artist:
Alicia Hauff Studio
5302 51st Avenue South Suite A | Fargo, ND (By Appointment Only)
701.527.5063
Instagram: @aliciahauffstudio